Consumer demand is increasing for food and beverage products fortified with functional ingredients that provide health benefits. Phytochemicals derived from fruits, vegetables, and other plants are currently being researched for their potential medicinal and general health-promoting properties. For example, flavonoids and limonoids are reported to provide health benefits. Citrus phytochemicals derived from citrus fruits are also of interest for their growing list of health benefits. However beverages, for example, juice beverages, have not been fortified with citrus phytochemicals (e.g., citrus flavonoids and citrus limonoids) largely because some of these compounds would impart bitterness at elevated concentrations, and so would provide an unpleasant taste experience. In fact, conventional juice stream processing for citrus juice manufacture actively minimizes transfer of flavonoids and limonoids from the citrus peel and seeds to the juice in order to avoid adding bitterness to the juice. Citrus flavonoids and citrus limonoids are kept below certain low levels in the juice stream through controlled process manufacturing practices, for example, limited pressure during extraction of the juice from the citrus fruit, thermal treatment, enzymatic degradation of flavonoids and limonoids, resin filtration to remove flavonoids and limonoids, and blending of more bitter juice batches with less bitter juice batches.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method for fortifying a beverage with one or more citrus phytochemicals while concealing the bitter taste of these compounds in the beverage. It is also an object of the present invention to provide beverages fortified with one or more citrus phytochemicals but which do not have the bitter taste characteristics of these compounds. These and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention or certain embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the following disclosure and description of exemplary embodiments.